New Jersey Restaurateur Gets TV Cooking Show

Vic Rallo at one of his restaurants, Basil T’s Brewery and Italian Grill.

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

By TAMMY LA GORCE

June 21, 2013

Like a lot of busy restaurateurs, Vic Rallo often wishes he could be in two places at once.

Unlike a lot of busy restaurateurs, though, Mr. Rallo, 49, will seem to accomplish that feat beginning next month, when he travels from Piedmont to Tuscany to Sicily on his television series “Eat! Drink! Italy! With Vic Rallo,” which has its premiere July 6. Viewers of the new 30-minute weekly show, to be carried by WNET, WLIW21 and NJTV, will follow his culinary adventures through various regions of Italy. Meanwhile, he will be traveling a circuit from his home in Fair Haven to his two restaurants in Monmouth County. (The initial 13 episodes were shot during three trips to Italy between the fall of 2011 and the spring of this year.)

“It’s super, super important for me to be seen here,” Mr. Rallo said recently from the wine cellar at Basil T’s Brewery and Italian Grill, his Red Bank place. “If you own a restaurant, people want to know you care. And the only way to ensure that is by showing up.” He is also an owner of Undici Taverna Rustica in Rumson. “I’m directly involved in implementing new dishes with the chefs, with purchasing all the wine and the food,” he said. “You have to be really hands-on.”

Hands-on is also a guiding principle of the show, which had its roots in YouTube. Mr. Rallo conceived of it in 2010, after a couple of years of posting cooking videos, shot in the kitchen of Basil T’s, to the site. “I started to get a following, a lot of attention,” he said, which prompted him to follow up on a friend’s invitation to meet with Mark Ganguzza, a director and producer, who agreed to work on the show and became its director and executive producer.

“We immediately became friends,” Mr. Rallo said, and in 2010 the two recruited a film crew and set off for Italy. The idea was to avoid “a normal recipe show,” Mr. Rallo said, adding, “Every day in Italy is an education — the wine, the food, the culture.” Home cooks and wine enthusiasts, he and Mr. Ganguzza decided, could vicariously learn lessons he picked up in his travels.

One episode, for example, includes a segment in which Mr. Rallo fries calamari after meeting with a squid purveyor in Sicily, and another in which he cooks a classic soup of tomatoes, porcini mushrooms, chickpeas and farro with a chef in Tuscany.

Despite the novelty of the direct-from-Italy approach, selling the show to television was not much like a stroll through an open-air market for Mr. Rallo. After securing a meeting with executives at WNET, the Manhattan-based PBS affiliate, in 2011, he was told he needed to find sponsors if the station was to consider picking up “Eat! Drink! Italy!” He met with potential sponsors, eventually enlisting nearly a dozen Italian food and wine companies for the show. The three PBS affiliates — WNET broadcasts in New York and New Jersey, WLIW21 on Long Island and NJTV in New Jersey, though all are based in the same Manhattan building — offered him a one-season contract.

Mr. Rallo in a scene from a television show that will have its premiere in July.

He attributes his perseverance to his parents, who raised him and his brother, Robert Rallo, now Basil T’s manager and head of operations, in Franklin Lakes. Both parents are now deceased, but “they taught me that everything you want to achieve depends on how hard you want to work,” he said.

That may also account for Mr. Rallo’s achievements outside the culinary arena. He is a competitive bicycle racer, a triathlete and a recreational surfer, he said. He recently wrote his second book, “21 Wines” (Pediment Publishing), with Anthony Verdoni, a Neptune-based wine scholar who makes occasional appearances on “Eat! Drink! Italy!”

Mr. Rallo is also a lawyer. And though he is a member of the New Jersey bar and still does work for Shebell & Shebell, a firm in Shrewsbury, he has never actively pursued his law career. “I was born into the restaurant business,” he said. His father, Vic Rallo, owned markets and pizzerias in cities throughout northern New Jersey.

The younger Mr. Rallo, who is married and has three children, opened Basil T’s, which he called “casual and fun,” 29 years ago. He became a partner in Undici Taverna Rustica, which is less casual, six years ago.

Working with Mr. Verdoni, 70, on the book and on several segments of the TV show was a way to fold in Mr. Verdoni’s extensive knowledge of wine, Mr. Rallo said. Mr. Verdoni said he suspected that the show also needed a foil. “I think he wanted me to be in it because I’m sort of the opposite of him — I’m very passive and quiet, and he’s a forceful, aggressive type of person,” he said.

Mr. Verdoni estimated that he had been on 140 wine-research trips to Italy during 40 years in the wine business, a period that overlapped with his academic career. He is retired from teaching classical languages and literature at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City.

“I’m not so vivacious. But Vic is,” Mr. Verdoni said. “All you have to do is watch the show, and you’ll get a sense of that.”

The premiere episode of “Eat! Drink! Italy! With Vic Rallo” will be screened July 6 at 6 p.m. at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, with an appearance by Mr. Rallo and music by the rock band Burlap to Cashmere. Tickets, with proceeds benefiting the Count Basie Theater Performing Arts Academy, cost $17. For information: countbasietheatre.org or (732) 842-9000.